In Search Of A Just Transition

Gladys Brache of the Sierra Leone Labour Congress spoke to an International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) meeting held in Copenhagen to coincide with the COP15 climate summit about the very minimal things her war-torn nation needed in order to build a functioning society, mainly coming down to education and technology transfer.

The reasons became clear as Brache explained the situations people are facing in the mostly agricultural and mining economy of Sierra Leone, where she said that, "climate change [has] affected our nation very, very badly." That follows onto 11 years of war which she said were often characterized by amputations and blood running down city streets. She described a populace dealing with the interconnected problems of a lack of drinking water, droughts, landslides, floods, deforestation and pollution.

A major common thread is the water problems having to do with both their environmental circumstances and economically motivated behavior, and central to understanding the other issues. Flooding is being partly caused by increased rain, partly by the rising of the Atlantic along the coast, and partly from deforestation effects.

Rainfall has increased not only in severity, but in unpredictability. The previously reliable cycle of six month dry/wet periods have been upended so that in parts of the country, Brache said, it rains "all through the year" and "seeds rot in the ground" so that people must purchase expensive, imported rice. "Farmers no longer know when to plant their seed and when to do their harvesting," she said, a story that matched what I heard from people living throughout Africa and Asia at the conference.

Adding to that, deforestation both increases floods after heavy rains and prevents rain being held as groundwater in the center of the country, leading to drinking water shortages. Brache said the deforestation is caused by a combination of mining, commercial logging and the lack of resources to afford fuel other than wood. She said the trade unions were trying to raise awareness of climate change issues through workshops, including guidance about replanting trees after cutting others down, though helping Sierra Leone with solar electricity generation would help directly replace the use of wood as a fuel.

Brache also explained the direct pollution effects and other economic problems caused by lack of technology. Lacking a recycling industry, discarded, imported beverage containers create a serious litter problem. At the other end, the lack of a domestic food processing or beverage industry and transportation infrastructure means that edible forest products in one part of the country go to waste, enriching no one and making it harder to preserve intact forests.

One thing solar power, recycling and beverage industry technologies have in common is that they're decades old. The US beverage industry alone is over a century old.

How could anyone really begrudge knowledge that's been around as long as bottling plants to a struggling and destitute nation, where worker representatives like Brache are seeking to build towards universal, basic goals such as "social justice and long term employment"?

As Bob Baugh, executive director of the AFL-CIO, pointed out that evening, "more than ninety percent of technology transfer issues aren't intellectual property issues at all." He said that was a reason why US unions supported not only needed technology transfer to developing nations, but training, support to ensure resources could be utilized and joint, public domain research and development efforts. This is the path the ITUC advocates for helping every country participate in reducing pollution while creating good job opportunities for their people.

Baugh said that a just transition to a better future that included technology transfer was a matter of survival, as much for a wealthy country like the US as one the poorest, such as Sierra Leone. Wherever we live, he said, "all our aspirations are the same."

Views expressed on this page are those of the authors and not necessarily those of Campaign for America's Future or Institute for America's Future